Mike Rizzo looks ahead to July

With June ending today, baseball moved precisely one month away from the July 31st non-waiver trade deadline. Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo has no precise expectations, other than making the team younger and more athletic in any trades the Nationals decide to make.

"I want to improve the ball club," Rizzo said. "That could be by acquiring talent in a trade. That could be by trading some players away. We just want to get better for the remainder of 2010, but always beyond. We want to get younger, better, more athletic, more pitching.

"There's no mantra of what's a successful trade time or anything like that. We like the ball club we have. We want to improve the product. Get better. Get younger. That's what we're going to look to do in anything that we do trade-wise."

Rizzo has a list of players he deemed untouchable, although he would share any of those names. (One assumes "Strasburg" is written in bold, upper case, size 72-font letters.) Rizzo said he could see the Nationals making a flurry of moves or making no trades at all.

"We're not going to make trades just to make a trade," Rizzo said. "We're going to make a trade that improves the club long-term."

There are plenty of "frangible" players on the 40-man, and in the minors (off-roster) as well. What the FO needs to be reasonably certain of, is who they believe constitutes the 'core' of the orginization going forward, then listen to or propose trades involving anyone else not on that list.

"We want to get younger, better, more athletic.." said Rizzo. Why would you care if the team is more athletic? You need guys with supreme skills in their prime. It's all about skills, not profile. They sit around and develop a profile with a checklist and vote on the Most Eligible Player.

The typical excuse is that the evaluators are looking at the prospect as young and raw, and look to see what they'll do physically to compensate for any lack of skill down the road. 'We can get these type numbers off of him, it's safe'